Testimony to FAST's smart keynote speaker and strategic blogging strategy that a week after the FAST Forward conference in San Diego conversation around issues raised at the conference continues. Andrew McAfee's post The Impact of Information Technology (IT) on Businesses and their Leaders, inspired by an exchange with Euan Semple at the conference continues to grab attention.
Reading that post I realized a serious oversight in my conference report was Chris Heuer's terrific session on Social Media. Testimony to Chris's World Cafe facilitation skills that he had a room filled with interesting people in animated conversation Friday afternoon following 2 session filled days.
I especially appreciated Chris providing an opportunity to think about what we did not hear at the conference but should be considered. Of course given the focus of this 21st Century Organization blog it was the fact that any technology, be it search or social media or prediction markets or virtual worlds or technologies not yet invented need suppportive management and organizations to leverage the full benefits. Interestingly the topic that has come to life on Andrew McAfee's post conference discussion.
And given the growing body of knowledge emerging around organizational network analysis ONA) through the work of Rob Cross and the Network Roundtable, Valdis Krebs, Steve Borgatti, Duncan Watts and a growing number of ONA practitioners, it was surprising to me that even tools like ConnectBeam appear not to be fully leveraging the social networking elements, yet. Perhaps business social networking platforms like LinkedIn and VisiblePath are working with other search companies to have an impact in enterprises?
When I've seen a Roundtable presentation describing a member organization combining ONA and NTags to strategically connect people across their organization to promote innovation, clearly there are interesting new opportunities to marry technology and emerging disciplines to aid enterprises beyond those discussed in San Diego.
Thanks Chris Heuer for prompting my thinking.
~ Jenny Ambrozek
